I wonder if the gigantic drop in right wing terrorism is because of the increase in ICE enrollment and activity - they've all flocked to the place that lets them legally discriminate against, and attack any and all minorities (and non-minorities who defend the minorities) with abandon and with no accountability. Frightening to consider!
Great writeup Noah and I think you have it all exactly right. One question I always have - when you talk about progressive influence on the Democratic party, I'm always so very skeptical about the size of this influence. You reference a few occurences of influence here, but by and large to me, it seems that "centrists" or "normie libs" make up 90% of the democrat-voting peoples that want normal, non-super-progressive policy. I realize that those 10% of super-progressives may have more than a 10% influence on the party, but I have trouble buying that it's a whole lot more influence than their 10% would ordinarily represent. Am I wrong on that? Would be interesting to see data on this as opposed to just vibes.
Anyone else having trouble sleeping with all this? The fact that there's this huge group of leaders on the right that want to harm me, harm my family (via war and all the things that would follow) is really taking a toll.
I'm skeptical. For one thing, "normie voters" have pretty "incoherent" views on politics: they're more likely to support Medicare for All and ICE crackdowns (or privatize Medicare and open borders) than a more classically "centrist" approach. "Normie voters" tend to be "normie" because they don't think about politics as much as, you know, politically-engaged voters, and when people don't know much about something they tend to avoid the extremes and opt for the middle until they get more educated on the matter.
Also, even if we assume that "normie libs" are the majority of the Democratic base (which is sorta questionable), the vast majority of activists and Party workers/officials aren't "normie" in any sense of the term. When times are good and the party does a pretty decent job of winning elections and governing, "normie voters" are fine to let the Party activists and NGOs set the agenda; when things get bad, they get a more "throw the bums out" mentality.
Finally, "liberal democracy" as a political tradition is very brittle, especially amid economic upheaval. Most people (even in America) will either support a dictatorial regime or shut their mouths and carry on. Those who oppose an authoritarian regime will likely be composed of extremists from the opposing side (the German Communists versus the Nazis, the French Resistance against Vichy, etc.).
Right wing terrorism is not really down. Now it's right wing state sponsored terrorism carried out by Ice and other federal agencies on the orders of trump.
If things like the Chicago apartment raid were included in the data as well as all the abuses by the masked men of ICE, right wing terrorism would be way up.
It's no wonder civilian right wing terrorism is "down", the government is doing their work for them.
A-MEN, and I hope Noah reads your comment. He seems to be trying to perform a "both-sides" approach to the current and obvious rise of federal government fascism. Maybe he needs to stick to economics in the future.
I think it depends on the level of attention any particular issue gets. Progs are *extremely* politically involved/obsessive, because they generally are richer than moderates & often have lived more of their life in the NGOs & academia than in "normal jobs".
So low-visible issues tend to get ruled by them, whereas anything that raises to public attention quickly slips from their grasp. Sentencing for criminal offenses in the 2010s vs 20s is a pretty good example of this imo. By now many have seen the cases of Mr. Arrested-900-times finally killing someone, so the left is losing the issue. But there are many more issues that nobody but 5 moderates & 95 progs even know about, much less care.
"Great writeup Noah...One question...when you talk about progressive influence on the Democratic party, I'm always so very skeptical"
I think you're being kind to Noah and you should be more honest and direct with him. It's obvious that Noah is spending way too much time online. One visit to Bluesky does not actually give you an understanding of what the left wing of a country of 340 million people is thinking. This entire line of political reasoning is kind of worthless, and any conclusions drawn from it are likely to be wrong.
I've spent more time on Substack over the past few weeks than I should have. And what I'm learning is that there is a kind of "centrist" bubble here where a bunch of relatively right-wing people pay money to be told stories about progressives. That's fine as entertainment, I guess! But it isn't worth much if your goal is to develop a useful mental model of the world.
Very true. I co-lead an Indivisible group in a very red state. Our grassroots’ enthusiasm is amazing and inspiring, and the overwhelming (and non-partisan) focus is simply anti-MAGA and pro-freedom.
I’m curious about this, I’ve heard ICE described as a jobs program for the Trump base. Do we have any data that tracks the type of people who have enlisted?
Thanks for posting some data. And the data makes it perfectly clear why I don't trust the data that claims there's all this right-wing violence. The most recent "right" politically-motivated violence was the guy who shot the Minnesota legislator. He was a Tim Walz appointee who thought Walz told him to kill some politicians. He was clearly nuts, not a purveyor of right-wing violence.
A brief reveiw of the other attacks labeled right wing show that most of them are just as flimsy. (Maybe the ones labeled left wing are too, but I didn't check those.)
vance boelter does seem to be either delusional or hoping for an insanity plea, but i think you are understating the extent to which he can be characterized as right-wing
it seems pretty clear that he's a right-wing guy, and he's assassinating democratic politicians; i really don't think it's much of a reach to call that right wing terrorism even if he also happens to be genuinely crazy. i would assume most terrorists are at least a little crazy
Did You know that Trump and DHS declared war on a an apartment building in Chicago on September 30th? 130 residents were handcuffed in the middle of the night and all their possessions looted. A high percentage of them were American citizens.
This is why "just give in on immigration" is not viable if you actually care about freedom and democracy. Interior enforcement against non-criminals isn't just a threat to the liberty of unauthorized immigrants; it's a threat to everyone, and especially to everyone who bears a superficial similarity to immigrant populations. Secure the border better, okay; make bogus asylum claims harder to vindicate and/or quicker to dismiss, okay; but we cannot give into any policy stance that de facto requires Spanish-speaking, Latino-ancestry American citizens to carry papers everywhere lest they be set upon by ICE goons.
Can't you "give in" emphatically and whole heartedly to the proposition that the law should be enforced and therefor those who are here unlawfully not only should but must be deported given the fracture they are causing the country politically? It is not necessary to "give in" to cruelty in its implementation. How if can be done effectively without cruelty is I think the central question. Obama seems to have been able to deport large numbers without making us all feel like assholes. What he failed to do was to find a way to turn off the flow. Trump has accomplished that not with walls but through terrorizing immigrants indiscriminately. There must be better ways and Democrats should be promoting them.
No. The "fracture they [unauthorized immigrants] are causing the country politically" is caused by evil far-right propaganda, like the lies about Haitians eating pets in Springfield which the Trump campaign enthusiastically spread. It's not caused by any real material harm done by unauthorized immigration. And you yourself implicitly admit that nobody has found a non-cruel way to do interior enforcement, so in practice giving in means accepting pointless cruelty to pander to the dupes of far-right propaganda.
No it doesn’t. It means being in favor of actions taken that within the law and not with those taken outside of it.
Clinton triangulated on law and order to retake the middle. That’s what Noah is suggesting be done on immigration and he’s 100% correct.
Just because ICE raided an apartment building illegally doesn’t mean we should flood the country with asylum seekers and stop enforcing immigration law. That’s the point.
Triangulate against what? The far right is against anything but white immigrants, the center right is about making almost all immigration illegal, the center and center left are about controlling the border without changing the laws about who is allowed in, and even the far left aren't really in favor of open borders.
Under Biden, there was an unprecedented surge or immigration and so called asylum seeking. Absolutely unprecedented. This was strategically very dumb because this is the primary issue motivating the right.
No we don’t capitulate to the far right, but we don’t have to. We reduce, rather than increase, the salience of the issue by limiting immigration and enforcing immigration laws humanely as Obama did.
Things Democrats could do: stop absurdly opposing a border wall, tighten requirements for asylum; require asylum seekers apply from outside the country; increase enforcement and deportation of undocumented immigrants; more funding for immigration courts to quickly process and deport people who are in violation of the law.
As much as the left wants to make this a black and white issue, it isn’t. There is room for Dems to recapture the middle.
I carry my ID everywhere and so does everyone I know. I don't understand why this requirement is considered burdensome. I don't find non enforcement of immigration law to be an acceptable situation just because the wrong people might get detained sometimes.
During the Federal raid on the apartment in Chicago on September 30, US citizens (mostly African Americans) were held handcuffed for several hours even after they offered to show ID. The reason is that federal agents wanted to check every adult against databases to find any outstanding warrants. So, having your ID doesn't protect you from uncomfortable, humiliating, and terrifying detention.
After they were finally released, they returned to their apartment units to find every door blown open and all their possessions scattered around their rooms, with many items missing.
"Most people do this thing therefore it is OK to unleash state violence on people who don't" is not actually logic compatible with a free society. In any actual free society worthy of the name, we all have the right to walk around without carrying or showing our papers.
Moreover, no actual harm is done by refraining from interior enforcement of immigration law against non-criminals. Such enforcement does not, as a matter of well-established fact, make us safer, freer, or more prosperous. The right-wing claims that it does are racist lies that have been decisively refuted by people like Alex Nowrasteh. Forcibly detaining "the wrong people", on the other hand, does do them actual material harm. So you are literally calling for innocent bystanders to be harmed for no reason.
So all you have to do is sneak across the border and then you're in for good if you don't get caught. If you do get caught, just try again. This is just more nonsensical liberal open borders policy. If you don't enforce the rules, there are no rules.
In Germany you are required to carry ID. So therefore Germany is not a "free society worthy of the name," right?
Again, you're not pointing to any actual harm, because you can't. You're just asserting that rules have to be enforced for rules' sake. Part of the liberal concept of freedom is that government needs an actual substantive reason to make coercive enforcement of rules valid.
If you don't like the immigration laws then repeal them. The Democrats should campaign on that. I'm sure they would do well. You liberals are just like Trump. You pick and choose the rules you like and ignore those you don't.
Your interpretation of the BLM demonstrations is very different from mine. I participated in those demonstrations because I wanted the police to stop killing Black people. Racism raised its ugly head in a shockingly clear way, and I wanted it to stop. The Floyd killing was only one of many incidents, and I would count the Supreme Court evisceration of the Voting Rights Act as another key case of backsliding on the civil rights that were won in the 1960s. BLM was an effort to restore those rights.
Of course this is not how the Right portrayed it. They scared everyone with more racist propaganda. And the Defund the Police slogan was a supremely stupid policy idea on the Left. And then there were the violent demonstrations (by Left, Right, and nihilists) in Portland.
Nonetheless, I believe that the vast majority of people marching for BLM were not in favor of defunding the policy or of violently attacking them. And when Defund and violent demonstrations petered out, we all were glad.
If it hadn't been "defund" the police, it would just have been something else. Remember how they turned "critical race theory" into some kind of creepy campaign to make white people illegal, or whatever they said it was?
The BLM movement was founded based on a lie that there's an epidemic of unarmed black people being killed by the cops. Data showed that it was not true and that these cases were rare and did not indicate systemic racism. That resulted in decline in support for BLM from those who had joined with good intentions.
The part of this I'm skeptical of is that I don't know how you would negotiate with people who are angry because of their own self-inflicted bad dreams.
I live in Portland. Over the course of the last week, Donald Trump has insisted that Portland is a "warzone" and that it is "burning down." He and his federal government have talked endlessly about how it's filled with some kind of antifa-terrorism, so scary and powerful and well-funded that the politicians are too afraid for their lives to even ask for help.
It should go without saying that all of these are lies. I walk through Portland every day. There are no fires or roving mobs or antifa terrorists. It's sunny and warm outside my window, there is no sign of violence or uprising or war. There are a small group of a few dozen low-energy protestors in front of the ICE facility, who appear to be completely peaceful. The entire idea of Portland as a war-zone appears to be a story the right made up in order to enable a certain macho rightist fantasy. Republican politicians wish that Portland were being destroyed by left-wing activists because it would justify their abuses of Democrats and feelings of persecution on social media posts. And so their own media, unmoored by such things as truth and ethics, has obligingly conjured it into being with false images and television AI and they believe those images are real.
And I don't think it's true that Trump understands that Portland is actually peaceful and is cynically lying about the fact. Donald Trump seems to actually believe that Portland is at war and that he is its savior. He expressed seemingly genuine confusion when our governor refused his help, because he had seen on Fox News that Portland was "burning down" (it was apparently just reused B-roll from 2020.)
Let's say I'm a progressive willing to take the L and make some big concessions to the conservative faction. Maybe I'm willing to give ground on immigration or trans issues or whatever other favorite issue you have, in order to stop my city from being invaded by right-wing paramilitary forces. American government isn't actually supposed to work like that, but fine, whatever, they win.
Even if I agree to all this, the reason Trump is invading my city isn't a specific policy about trans people. Trump is invading my city because he believes wrongly that Portland is a war zone in need of a right-wing savior. He will not be convinced otherwise by facts or reporting or testimony from residents, all of which he has decided are biased and fake.
How could any policy concession I offer possibly change Donald Trump's opinion about the situation in Portland, when the facts he has are not arrived at by him or his people observing the world? How can you argue with the dreams of a machine designed to tell Trump and his party only the fantasies they want to hear? If I agree to a concession, won't he just decided to imagine a world in which I didn't make one, or in which it doesn't matter that I did because the trans antifa terrorists in his head are still attacking him?
The current shutdown negotiations are a similar example. Democrats started with a position ("Extend the Obamacare subsidies.") As near as I can tell, Republicans didn't like that position, and so they chose to create an imaginary world in which Democrats have an entirely different position ("Give health care to illegal immigrants.") Republicans are now spending all their time arguing against this new position they've made up. The Republican position on immigration is that Haitan immigrants shouldn't be allowed to eat pets. I agree, but what could I possibly say to convince them that the pet-eating isn't happening, or that it has stopped?
Putting aside any political hate, I'm not sure how you would go about negotiating concessions with a movement that works like this. How could any amount of policy concession or negotiation or surrender matter when the thing you're competing with is conservatism's own self-selected fever dreams, enabled by their technology? How do you negotiate with a politics that lives exclusively in the realm of its own unreality, that invents positions for the other side based only on what's most viscerally satisfying for them in the moment?
These people are eager to start a civil war with me and my neighbors because of bad dreams they are having about us. There are a lot of policy concessions I'd be willing to make if I thought it would calm the right-wing down. But I see very little reason to believe that anything Democrats can offer them possibly would.
You perfectly capture the overall fact-free nature of MAGA. And while I will grant that much of the political genius of Trump is that he starts with a salient point (i.e. NATO countries need to pay more for their defense or China has taken our jobs), he and the propagandists that surround and support him wrap so many lies around that fact that it becomes so distorted from reality as to become fantasy.
This is why I am not so sure Noah is correct when he says that the right would win a civil war. Winning wars requires being grounded in facts and addressing reality as it is, not as you would like it to be.
Reading Mr. Smith’s statement that we are not in a civl war reminded me of the ongoing argument over whether what is happening in Gaza is genocide or not. If one side kills enough women and children on the other side - the progenitors and the inhabitants of the next generation - then it is genocide no matter what one chooses to call it.
Mr. Smith would have it that because we have not yet, and indeed may well not descend into a Gettysburg or an Antietam (and god knows I certainly hope we don’t), we are not in the midst of a civil war. he further notes that we have not even reverted to the kind of violence that was so prevalent in the mid-60’s to early 70’s. I was both soldier and college student at the time, and I can attest to the validity of his description.
But I feel he fails to take a couple of things into account.
First - the violence of that time was primarily over two very significant issues - racism and the Vietnam War. It was not primarily about the general form or purpose of our government, even as Richard Nixon, a pale imitation of Donald Trump, did try to neutralize or eliminate his political opposition leading to the approaching election. Now our form of government is precisely the issue, whether or not American choose to think of it in that way or not.
Second - we have managed, for the first time in our history to re-elect to the presidency of the United States a man who has proven beyond any shadow of a doubt to utterly disdain and disavow our founding, our history, our electoral process, our Constitution, and the rule of law. No other American president, with the possible exception of Andrew Johnson in a very dfferent way has been so unfit for the office (and he, of course, was not directly elected). Further, Trump has surrounded himself with a collection of lickspittles, cranks, election deniers, vengeance seekers, barn-burners, and other assorted ne’er-do-wells who seem to share that disdain and that disavowal, and in some crucial cases (Miller and Vought) actively agree with it.
Abraham Lincoln in that remarkable two minutes at Gettysburg said. “Now we are engaged in a great Civil War, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure”. In thinking civil war not to be the case simply because our ground is not yet red, I feel Mr. Smith misses Lincoln’s point.
I do wish you had done a little more in this piece to acknowledge the existence of the center-left, which may be hard to hear over the din from the woke crowd, but which still exists, very much wants to win elections, and commands a solid majority of Democratic primary voters. Persuasion 2025 existed, but so did Welcomefest.
We can win, Noah. If we can beat the wokes in the primary we can beat MAGA in the general. Ruben Gallego was spotted in Iowa recently. It’ll be a lot of work and a lot of punching left but we can do it.
You can win if you actually attack the wokes, but the standard center left strategy these days seems to be to pretend they don't exist. That's not getting my vote.
The imbalance in posts like this one by Noah is to set as the two opposing forces the "right" and the "left." But the former includes an entirety of one of our two parties which controls all three branches of government and the latter includes a small group of loudmouthed people who have up to now had disproportionate, but far from complete control over the other, currently powerless party.
They are simply incomparable entities.
As you correctly note, the victory over Trump and MAGA/the Republicans will come when the vastly bigger center and center-left organizes and finds effective ways to resist (e.g., by a landslide election next year).
<and commands a solid majority of Democratic primary voters.>
I'm not so sure about this last one. Most primary Democratic voters prefer a Bernie Sanders-style populist agenda, but tied to a candidate they think has a better chance of defeating MAGA. Abundance may be a good policy, but it's rather mediocre when it comes to politics: the center-left would do well to campaign like Bernie Sanders but govern like Hillary Clinton, rather than campaigning AND governing like Hillary Clinton.
Being the Berniebro that I am, I don't really want the center-left (or at least not THIS center-left) to win, but I still think that populist campaign + Abundance policymaking is the best route for squishy "normie lib" types like Noah.
That pill question doesn't seem to be measuring what it's touted to be. It doesn't ask if violence "should" be used for social change, it asks if it is often necessary, which people might just read as essentially a history question. Major social policy change has indeed often been associated with violence, from striking workers getting beaten by strikebreakers during the heydey of the labor movement in the progressive era to firehoses turned on protestors during Civil rights, to the actual Civil War and American Revolution. And this is even more the case if one looks outside of the US.
It seems to me the respondents may just have been answering what is truthful as a factual matter, which is what the question actually asked, not as a prescriptive matter, which it did not ask about. It might feel like one's being an ignoramus about history to answer otherwise. No surprise that self IDed moderates were the least likely to say yes, since they're also generally the most ignorant of political/historical issues in general.
It's also hard to see Gen Z as showing anything but a negligible difference in response, as between their self-ID politically. Between 40 and 49% of ALL Gen Z of any stripe answered yes, and that may just be because there's more focus on that type of struggle in the past in history classes today. The real distinction between self-IDed political tribe was among Gen X and Boomers.
"That pill question doesn't seem to be measuring what it's touted to be. It doesn't ask if violence "should" be used for social change, it asks if it is often necessary, which people might just read as essentially a history question"
I wasn't part of the polling, but this is %100 how I would have interpreted and answered the question.
Large gap between view on favorability and willingness to act. The impression the polls leave is that there is much more support for violence (if it leads it bleeds) than is likely to actually result in violence.
Having said that Trump et al are working very hard to incite left wing violence so that they can react with "overwhelming force". De-escalation will not come from TRUMP/MAGA.
Idk, part of me thinks Americans would give up their democracy if it meant some economic benefits. I think Noah is putting far too much faith in the American voter. Don't forget these are the same voters who saw what Trump did on January 6th, listen to his rhetoric, and concluded: that's fine, I'll vote for that. I've lost basically all faith in the moral goodness of American voters.
The saddest thing to happen in the past six months is that Trump has done catastrophic damage to our institutions and is threatening to tear down our democracy, our economy and our standing in the world and for those past six months his poll numbers have budged . . . not at all. In effect, the electorate has just shrugged at all his depredations.
That's why I'm cheering for the economy to turn sour, for people's healthcare premiums to skyrocket and many of his more tentative supporters to lose their jobs. His actions are a direct and dire threat and the only way to turn him aside is at the ballot box and the only way for that to happen is for people to glue their hands to the hot stove and to feel the effect of his leadership directly.
I wish it weren't so, but we now have all the evidence we need that that is what it takes.
(And this, btw, is why a Democratic "win" by getting the Republicans to cave and extend the ACA subsidies would be the biggest, stupidest own goal I can imagine. No, we want the voters to understand what Republican control of the government means; we *want* those premiums to skyrocket, with the Republicans' fingerprints all over them. Don't be stupid, Democrats!)
People said the same thing before the US Civil War that the South would inevitably win because the south had all the guns and had a military culture. Now I am not suggesting a civil war but I think it is wrong to suggest the right would inevitably win.
But Noah and his Silicon Valley VC pals are effectively modern day copperheads because they would basically support the political "right" and hope for there victory.
I think the copperheads wanted to let the south secede to avoid a civil war. I don't think they hoped for the south's victory. And I don't read Noah as supporting the political "right". He is trying to be realistic about who holds what cards and how they can be best played.
Yeah, something like 70% of America's GDP is in blue districts, and there's a pretty good history of economic power being what wins wars, rather than quantity of guns and ammo at start (1st Civil war, WW2, etc.). Look at the success Ukraine is having targeting Russia's economics of power production and supply despite being vastly outnumbered in ammo, tanks and soldiers. I think the majority of our military industrial complex today was based on discoveries and spinouts from MIT (McDonnel Douglas, Boeing, Raytheon, General Dynamics, the atomic bombs, etc.) - seems like that's a pretty big advantage for Team Blue in this silly exercise.
I don't think Americans want a civil war either and don't want to add to the online speculation, but as soon as blue states stop sending 70+% of revenue to the Federal government, how do they fund the East German Stasi levels of internal terror and control needed to suppress half or more of the country? What percent of our 2M armed forces would take up arms against other Americans, maybe from their own states? The entire armed forces would support like one soldier every two square miles or so. Isn't it more common for empires to collapse from within after far flung areas just break away and the state doesn't have the power to stop them? Like CA stops sending their $200 Billion surplus back to the Federal government each year, and stops paying taxes - that's pretty different and harder to stop than shots at Fort Sumpter.
GDP changes the second the bullets start flying. How's that big GDP of NY going to look once they can't get fuel shipments from refineries in red areas, cargo ships won't enter the port because it's a conflict zone, and there has been capital flight from US based financial assets due to the war?
Also, CA doesn't have a surplus, nor would it send that surplus to the federal government if it had one. The federal government sends a lot of money to CA and CA sends no money to the federal government, so the leverage goes the opposite way that you think it does.
I think you're misunderstanding. Federal taxes collected from economic activity in CA are taxes paid by CA to the Federal government. If you look at Federal taxes collected from each state vs Federal funds spent in that state, CA is a net contributor to the Federal budget. These funds from wealthy states are redistributed to poorer states, as is standard in any federal system. This is separate from state taxes.
"Californians typically pay more in federal taxes than the state receives in federal spending each year, making California a “donor state.” Between federal fiscal years (FFYs) 2015 and 2023, federal taxes paid by California residents and businesses exceeded federal spending in every year except 2020, 2021, and 2023. In other words, California was a donor state in six out of the nine fiscal years for which data are available.
California likely would have been a donor state in additional years during this period if not for federal COVID funding. Since 2020, federal expenditures have included the substantial — but temporary — support provided to states, businesses, and individuals to address the COVID pandemic. These one-time COVID funds caused federal expenditures in California to jump significantly, which in turn has understated California’s role as a donor state.
Excluding temporary COVID funds from the analysis provides a more accurate picture of the long-term underlying fiscal trends and California’s true position as a donor state. Using this alternative analysis, between FFYs 2015 and 2023, Californians paid more in federal taxes than the state received in federal spending in eight out of these nine years (2020 is the exception). For example, Californians’ federal taxes exceeded federal spending — excluding COVID spending — by $55 billion in 2021, $101 billion in 2022, and $17 billion in 2023."
COVID funds drawing significantly on deficit spending means most states weren't donor states during the pandemic.
While it's true that GDP is often significantly adversely affected by war this cuts both ways, so it doesn't seem to favour the Reds. The economy of Texas won't do any better than NY in the event of a war, unless you're imagining the US Navy siding primarily with the Reds and thus the blockade only being against Blue ports. The Navy being the most educated and technocratic of the branches, they seem the least likely to predominantly swing Red. Most urban areas swing Blue, and most economic activity happens in urban areas. Were this to become an all out civil war it's very unclear to me where the lines would be drawn, and which factions would prevail, but I don't see a clear cut Red victory.
> Federal taxes collected from economic activity in CA are taxes paid by CA to the Federal government.
No, they absolutely are not. The state of CA pays 0 taxes to the federal government. Individuals located in CA pay taxes to the federal government, and they pay under rules set by the federal government, not by CA. CA has zero agency.
This claim doesn't make sense. Are you suggesting that the state of CA is somehow distinct from the geographical region called CA and the people who reside within it?
If you lived in CA, and the people of CA elected a government on a platform of seceding from the US, and a CA police officer showed up at your door to say you were under arrest for not paying your taxes, and you came to understand they meant you had sent your Federal taxes to the US federal government instead of the state government of California, and you told them "No sir, you have no agency in this matter," that would not prevent them from arresting you. As the representative body of the people of CA, the government of CA absolutely has agency over your federal taxation, in that the people of CA collectively have agency over their federal taxation.
If you wish to argue that the people of CA have no agency over their federal taxation, you had best tell that to the Americans, as they have a great many years of back taxes to pay to the British crown!
I think the idea is that if California as a state decides to secede, it would simply tell companies that they were no longer legally obligated to deduct those funds from paycheques and send them to the Federal government. It would probably tell them they were legally obligated to send that money to the California government instead. The IRS has no way to collect that money other than arresting or fining those who fail to send it. Paycheque withholding is a legally mandated process, but it's the responsibility of companies to actively send that money to the IRS. Whoever has the monopoly on force in California can compel companies to send their taxes anywhere they please.
A civil war in the modern United States is less likely to resemble the kitchen-set warfare seen during the Civil War and more likely to resemble a guerrilla insurgency. Assuming it's a left-wing regime fighting a right-wing rebellion, it would most likely look like the Vietnam War in reverse, with right-wing militias playing the role of the Vietcong. The Left would be dominant in the cities but virtually powerless in the countryside (unless it was willing to, in General Sherman's terms, "make Georgia howl"). By contrast, if a right-wing regime were fighting a leftist insurgency, there would probably be a lot more urban warfare, though I'd probably bet on the Right in that case.
Depends. My money's that the military will opt for whoever's in charge and claims to be preserving the union (just like they did during the original Civil War). Still, many officers and soldiers will likely resign and join the opposing side.
Actually that’s not really the case. With few exceptions, those on both sides did look forward to a short war, but while many in the south thought, as one put it, “One Confederate soldier is worth ten Yankees, that was not at all a prevalent thinking in the north. And as one South Carolinian put it best after the firing on Fort Sumter - “South Carolina is too small for a country and too big for an insane asylum”.
The "quick victory" has been a delusion that has started many wars that otherwise wouldn't have been fought. Same with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the German invasion of France in WWI.
"But whether Dems are slightly ahead or slightly behind the Republicans in popularity, the fact that it’s even close is a staggering indictment of the progressive movement."
Uhhhh no. This is spectacularly wrong. The fact that it's even close is a staggering indictment of the American electorate. We have a party in power that's literally deploying the military against its own citizens, snatching random people off the streets and deporting them to foreign torture prisons, brazenly using the Justice Department to prosecute critics, etc. etc.
On the other side, a bunch of anonymous, semi-anonymous, and irrelevant people on social media are annoying on the internet. The fact that millions of people look at this and decide that there's anything to think for even a second about shows that millions of people are morally completely broken. My policy sensibilities are way way more technocratic than ideological. But these self-proclaimed centrists and swing voters going out and hemming and hawing because some people on the internet want to waste time doing land acknowledgments is a sign that we've completely lost the plot as a society.
It is this line that seems like only an assertion without support.
"Instead, the left has to realize that if there is a civil war-like conflict, and one side does win, it’ll be the right."
Wars are essentially about logistics; they involve managing resources. The blue states are the economic engines of the country, and their cities are the cylinders fueling that economy. When it comes to war, the right must figure out how to fund everything; having lots of guns alone isn't enough to win. I believe that Pritzker and Newsom are actually doing the right thing in this regard. Ultimately, it seems a Red federal government will clash with the blue states, but considering the logistics and resources, the red federal government will lose. They will lose because the blue states will stop sending money, cannot be forced to do so, and have the resources to deny a red central government the goods it needs to enforce its will.
One needs only to imagine if the West Coast states were in war with the Red Feds, the Red Feds would lose nearly 25% of GDP in a second.
Important caveat, my thinking presumes that this civil war is when the Red Fed tries regime change in these states via force.
As an old liberal, I can attest to the violence of riots and the rhetoric that was prevalent at that time. My experience in the Philadelphia may not be representative of the entire country, but here is my take. Talk is cheap, and when it comes time for actual violence, most people don't have the courage of their talk. Very few people, unless they have military experience, have experienced actual violence, seen real blood on the street in front of them, or seen the person next to them die. In an actual confrontation between groups, such as ICE and protesters, ICE would likely win since they are organized, have armored troops, and firearms. This scenario pictures a military-like contest, which ICE will win in the beginning, but remember, most of the people in ICE have never seen actual combat, and it remains to be seen how dedicated they would be when faced with the actual killing of their fellow citizens. I don't believe the majority of our military forces would agree to kill fellow citizens, regardless of an order from the chaos-monkey. I view ICE as an occupying force that will face a guerrilla insurgency, much as the Japanese or Germans would have faced if they had invaded. Ghandi freed India from British control with peaceful demonstrations, and I see the same here. The British had a unified command and control. In contrast, MAGA has an old man who has lost the respect of the military, incurred the displeasure of the Pope, and alienated the vast majority of the civilians who work for the government. When Trump goes, not soon enough, MABA will fall apart, and we can get down to compromise with those on the right who haven't lost their minds in the Cult of Trump.
"The George Floyd protests also loom incredibly large here, ..., the great protests of summer 2020 convinced the American right that their destruction was imminent unless they took drastic and ruthless action. The Biden administration’s wholehearted embrace of DEI only seemed to confirm the idea that 2020 had kicked the Great Replacement into high gear."
I'm more of a Bari Weiss type but, yeah. Embracing unprecedented immigration while actively rejecting assimilation and also engaging in anti-white theatrics was a generational mistake.
And the lawfare against Trump orchestrated in the Biden White House probably added to his support and gives him (at least in MAGA eyes) the justification for what he is doing to his antagonists now.
Hope they enjoy Democrats using the new precedents they are setting to go after them. I don't think any of them realize how much their political movement depends on right wing lawbreaking not getting prosecuted.
I think you missed trans-folk as a clutch “enemy within.” They have asked for records from gender care clinics at Childrend Hospital of Philidelphia (this is the Mass General of pediatrics) and Boston Children’s.
If you don’t mind me asking, there’s a tweet by you that was making the rounds in right wing circles with the implication I think that you wanted to displace/depower the political opposition on the right via immigration; do you think that this is the type of tweet that feeds into the great replacement theory type stuff or is the existing concern more specifically about ethnic as opposed to political concerns?
Do you still think this is a valid electoral strategy?
Did he say it was a valid electoral strategy, or was he just toying with the idea (as stated in his tweet) and possibly being a little bit troll-y as is his wont on Twitter? I think if it was a valid strategy, he'd be writing about it often. But you do you!
That’s a good point; Noah historically has been pro immigration and I generally take what he’s saying at face value but I may have been off base with that interpretation here.
I wonder if the gigantic drop in right wing terrorism is because of the increase in ICE enrollment and activity - they've all flocked to the place that lets them legally discriminate against, and attack any and all minorities (and non-minorities who defend the minorities) with abandon and with no accountability. Frightening to consider!
Great writeup Noah and I think you have it all exactly right. One question I always have - when you talk about progressive influence on the Democratic party, I'm always so very skeptical about the size of this influence. You reference a few occurences of influence here, but by and large to me, it seems that "centrists" or "normie libs" make up 90% of the democrat-voting peoples that want normal, non-super-progressive policy. I realize that those 10% of super-progressives may have more than a 10% influence on the party, but I have trouble buying that it's a whole lot more influence than their 10% would ordinarily represent. Am I wrong on that? Would be interesting to see data on this as opposed to just vibes.
Anyone else having trouble sleeping with all this? The fact that there's this huge group of leaders on the right that want to harm me, harm my family (via war and all the things that would follow) is really taking a toll.
I'm skeptical. For one thing, "normie voters" have pretty "incoherent" views on politics: they're more likely to support Medicare for All and ICE crackdowns (or privatize Medicare and open borders) than a more classically "centrist" approach. "Normie voters" tend to be "normie" because they don't think about politics as much as, you know, politically-engaged voters, and when people don't know much about something they tend to avoid the extremes and opt for the middle until they get more educated on the matter.
Also, even if we assume that "normie libs" are the majority of the Democratic base (which is sorta questionable), the vast majority of activists and Party workers/officials aren't "normie" in any sense of the term. When times are good and the party does a pretty decent job of winning elections and governing, "normie voters" are fine to let the Party activists and NGOs set the agenda; when things get bad, they get a more "throw the bums out" mentality.
Finally, "liberal democracy" as a political tradition is very brittle, especially amid economic upheaval. Most people (even in America) will either support a dictatorial regime or shut their mouths and carry on. Those who oppose an authoritarian regime will likely be composed of extremists from the opposing side (the German Communists versus the Nazis, the French Resistance against Vichy, etc.).
Right wing terrorism is not really down. Now it's right wing state sponsored terrorism carried out by Ice and other federal agencies on the orders of trump.
If things like the Chicago apartment raid were included in the data as well as all the abuses by the masked men of ICE, right wing terrorism would be way up.
It's no wonder civilian right wing terrorism is "down", the government is doing their work for them.
A-MEN, and I hope Noah reads your comment. He seems to be trying to perform a "both-sides" approach to the current and obvious rise of federal government fascism. Maybe he needs to stick to economics in the future.
I think it depends on the level of attention any particular issue gets. Progs are *extremely* politically involved/obsessive, because they generally are richer than moderates & often have lived more of their life in the NGOs & academia than in "normal jobs".
So low-visible issues tend to get ruled by them, whereas anything that raises to public attention quickly slips from their grasp. Sentencing for criminal offenses in the 2010s vs 20s is a pretty good example of this imo. By now many have seen the cases of Mr. Arrested-900-times finally killing someone, so the left is losing the issue. But there are many more issues that nobody but 5 moderates & 95 progs even know about, much less care.
"Great writeup Noah...One question...when you talk about progressive influence on the Democratic party, I'm always so very skeptical"
I think you're being kind to Noah and you should be more honest and direct with him. It's obvious that Noah is spending way too much time online. One visit to Bluesky does not actually give you an understanding of what the left wing of a country of 340 million people is thinking. This entire line of political reasoning is kind of worthless, and any conclusions drawn from it are likely to be wrong.
I've spent more time on Substack over the past few weeks than I should have. And what I'm learning is that there is a kind of "centrist" bubble here where a bunch of relatively right-wing people pay money to be told stories about progressives. That's fine as entertainment, I guess! But it isn't worth much if your goal is to develop a useful mental model of the world.
Very true. I co-lead an Indivisible group in a very red state. Our grassroots’ enthusiasm is amazing and inspiring, and the overwhelming (and non-partisan) focus is simply anti-MAGA and pro-freedom.
I’m curious about this, I’ve heard ICE described as a jobs program for the Trump base. Do we have any data that tracks the type of people who have enlisted?
What right-wing terrorism? Give me a list of incidents. Why on Earth would I trust some random organization who won't release the underlying data?
https://www.cato.org/blog/politically-motivated-terrorist-killers-data-sources-methodology
Thanks for posting some data. And the data makes it perfectly clear why I don't trust the data that claims there's all this right-wing violence. The most recent "right" politically-motivated violence was the guy who shot the Minnesota legislator. He was a Tim Walz appointee who thought Walz told him to kill some politicians. He was clearly nuts, not a purveyor of right-wing violence.
A brief reveiw of the other attacks labeled right wing show that most of them are just as flimsy. (Maybe the ones labeled left wing are too, but I didn't check those.)
vance boelter does seem to be either delusional or hoping for an insanity plea, but i think you are understating the extent to which he can be characterized as right-wing
he was a registered Republican (https://minnesotareformer.com/2025/06/17/vance-boelter-voted-in-2024-minnesota-republican-presidential-primary-records-show/), a self-described trump supporter (https://komonews.com/news/nation-world/accused-minnesota-assassin-told-fbi-that-tim-walz-wanted-him-to-kill-lawmakers) and an evangelical christian who gave anti-LGBT sermons (https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/14/us/minnesota-shootings-manhunt-vance-boelter-invs). he claimed at one point that tim walz forced him to commit the shootings by threatening his family (https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25999675-vance-boelter-letter-to-fbi-director-kash-patel/). however he was indeed reappointed by walz to a meaningless volunteer position (https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/vance-boelter-melissa-hortman-assassination-tim-walz-connection-minnesota/). and the other targets on his list (who tim walz apparently didn't tell him to kill?) were democratic politicians and groups like planned parenthood
it seems pretty clear that he's a right-wing guy, and he's assassinating democratic politicians; i really don't think it's much of a reach to call that right wing terrorism even if he also happens to be genuinely crazy. i would assume most terrorists are at least a little crazy
No, I don't think I will.
Did You know that Trump and DHS declared war on a an apartment building in Chicago on September 30th? 130 residents were handcuffed in the middle of the night and all their possessions looted. A high percentage of them were American citizens.
https://kathleenweber.substack.com/p/where-are-the-ice-chasing-lawyers/
This is why "just give in on immigration" is not viable if you actually care about freedom and democracy. Interior enforcement against non-criminals isn't just a threat to the liberty of unauthorized immigrants; it's a threat to everyone, and especially to everyone who bears a superficial similarity to immigrant populations. Secure the border better, okay; make bogus asylum claims harder to vindicate and/or quicker to dismiss, okay; but we cannot give into any policy stance that de facto requires Spanish-speaking, Latino-ancestry American citizens to carry papers everywhere lest they be set upon by ICE goons.
Can't you "give in" emphatically and whole heartedly to the proposition that the law should be enforced and therefor those who are here unlawfully not only should but must be deported given the fracture they are causing the country politically? It is not necessary to "give in" to cruelty in its implementation. How if can be done effectively without cruelty is I think the central question. Obama seems to have been able to deport large numbers without making us all feel like assholes. What he failed to do was to find a way to turn off the flow. Trump has accomplished that not with walls but through terrorizing immigrants indiscriminately. There must be better ways and Democrats should be promoting them.
No. The "fracture they [unauthorized immigrants] are causing the country politically" is caused by evil far-right propaganda, like the lies about Haitians eating pets in Springfield which the Trump campaign enthusiastically spread. It's not caused by any real material harm done by unauthorized immigration. And you yourself implicitly admit that nobody has found a non-cruel way to do interior enforcement, so in practice giving in means accepting pointless cruelty to pander to the dupes of far-right propaganda.
No, because ICE is breaking the law constantly. Being in favor of law means being against ICE right now.
No it doesn’t. It means being in favor of actions taken that within the law and not with those taken outside of it.
Clinton triangulated on law and order to retake the middle. That’s what Noah is suggesting be done on immigration and he’s 100% correct.
Just because ICE raided an apartment building illegally doesn’t mean we should flood the country with asylum seekers and stop enforcing immigration law. That’s the point.
Triangulate against what? The far right is against anything but white immigrants, the center right is about making almost all immigration illegal, the center and center left are about controlling the border without changing the laws about who is allowed in, and even the far left aren't really in favor of open borders.
This is why we can’t have nice things.
Under Biden, there was an unprecedented surge or immigration and so called asylum seeking. Absolutely unprecedented. This was strategically very dumb because this is the primary issue motivating the right.
No we don’t capitulate to the far right, but we don’t have to. We reduce, rather than increase, the salience of the issue by limiting immigration and enforcing immigration laws humanely as Obama did.
Things Democrats could do: stop absurdly opposing a border wall, tighten requirements for asylum; require asylum seekers apply from outside the country; increase enforcement and deportation of undocumented immigrants; more funding for immigration courts to quickly process and deport people who are in violation of the law.
As much as the left wants to make this a black and white issue, it isn’t. There is room for Dems to recapture the middle.
I carry my ID everywhere and so does everyone I know. I don't understand why this requirement is considered burdensome. I don't find non enforcement of immigration law to be an acceptable situation just because the wrong people might get detained sometimes.
During the Federal raid on the apartment in Chicago on September 30, US citizens (mostly African Americans) were held handcuffed for several hours even after they offered to show ID. The reason is that federal agents wanted to check every adult against databases to find any outstanding warrants. So, having your ID doesn't protect you from uncomfortable, humiliating, and terrifying detention.
After they were finally released, they returned to their apartment units to find every door blown open and all their possessions scattered around their rooms, with many items missing.
https://kathleenweber.substack.com/p/where-are-the-ice-chasing-lawyers/
"Most people do this thing therefore it is OK to unleash state violence on people who don't" is not actually logic compatible with a free society. In any actual free society worthy of the name, we all have the right to walk around without carrying or showing our papers.
Moreover, no actual harm is done by refraining from interior enforcement of immigration law against non-criminals. Such enforcement does not, as a matter of well-established fact, make us safer, freer, or more prosperous. The right-wing claims that it does are racist lies that have been decisively refuted by people like Alex Nowrasteh. Forcibly detaining "the wrong people", on the other hand, does do them actual material harm. So you are literally calling for innocent bystanders to be harmed for no reason.
So all you have to do is sneak across the border and then you're in for good if you don't get caught. If you do get caught, just try again. This is just more nonsensical liberal open borders policy. If you don't enforce the rules, there are no rules.
In Germany you are required to carry ID. So therefore Germany is not a "free society worthy of the name," right?
Again, you're not pointing to any actual harm, because you can't. You're just asserting that rules have to be enforced for rules' sake. Part of the liberal concept of freedom is that government needs an actual substantive reason to make coercive enforcement of rules valid.
If you don't like the immigration laws then repeal them. The Democrats should campaign on that. I'm sure they would do well. You liberals are just like Trump. You pick and choose the rules you like and ignore those you don't.
Whether or not it's burdensome is kinda a red herring. ICE has detained and abused a lot of people who have had valid Id on them.
The U.S. Constitution goes to great lengths to avoid having “the wrong people get detained sometimes.”
Not really. It goes to great lengths to avoid having the wrong people get convicted.
That is true. And Amendments 4, 5, 6, and 8 all have elements that are supposed to prevent unlawful or unreasonably lengthy detentions.
I respect that position, in the sense that it's the one I would expect my right-wing nutjob uncle to hold as well.
Reminds me of the opening scene of "Brazil"
I'll bet ICE didn't give out receipts. Shall we instead discuss ducts???
And it came out today Wells Fargo foreclosed on the building the day before. https://southsideweekly.com/federal-agents-storm-south-shore-building-detaining-families-and-children/
Thanks. Spectacular article!
Your interpretation of the BLM demonstrations is very different from mine. I participated in those demonstrations because I wanted the police to stop killing Black people. Racism raised its ugly head in a shockingly clear way, and I wanted it to stop. The Floyd killing was only one of many incidents, and I would count the Supreme Court evisceration of the Voting Rights Act as another key case of backsliding on the civil rights that were won in the 1960s. BLM was an effort to restore those rights.
Of course this is not how the Right portrayed it. They scared everyone with more racist propaganda. And the Defund the Police slogan was a supremely stupid policy idea on the Left. And then there were the violent demonstrations (by Left, Right, and nihilists) in Portland.
Nonetheless, I believe that the vast majority of people marching for BLM were not in favor of defunding the policy or of violently attacking them. And when Defund and violent demonstrations petered out, we all were glad.
Ahmad Aubrey
Breonna Taylor
George Floyd
Trayvon Martin
Tamir Rice
Botham Jean
Sandra Bland
Too, too many more…
If it hadn't been "defund" the police, it would just have been something else. Remember how they turned "critical race theory" into some kind of creepy campaign to make white people illegal, or whatever they said it was?
The BLM movement was founded based on a lie that there's an epidemic of unarmed black people being killed by the cops. Data showed that it was not true and that these cases were rare and did not indicate systemic racism. That resulted in decline in support for BLM from those who had joined with good intentions.
It was more about the utter failure to ever prosecute any officers for killing unarmed black people, which is where the claim of racism was most true.
Most of the violent demonstrations happened when the police decided to be violent. Naturally, the protestors were blamed.
The part of this I'm skeptical of is that I don't know how you would negotiate with people who are angry because of their own self-inflicted bad dreams.
I live in Portland. Over the course of the last week, Donald Trump has insisted that Portland is a "warzone" and that it is "burning down." He and his federal government have talked endlessly about how it's filled with some kind of antifa-terrorism, so scary and powerful and well-funded that the politicians are too afraid for their lives to even ask for help.
It should go without saying that all of these are lies. I walk through Portland every day. There are no fires or roving mobs or antifa terrorists. It's sunny and warm outside my window, there is no sign of violence or uprising or war. There are a small group of a few dozen low-energy protestors in front of the ICE facility, who appear to be completely peaceful. The entire idea of Portland as a war-zone appears to be a story the right made up in order to enable a certain macho rightist fantasy. Republican politicians wish that Portland were being destroyed by left-wing activists because it would justify their abuses of Democrats and feelings of persecution on social media posts. And so their own media, unmoored by such things as truth and ethics, has obligingly conjured it into being with false images and television AI and they believe those images are real.
And I don't think it's true that Trump understands that Portland is actually peaceful and is cynically lying about the fact. Donald Trump seems to actually believe that Portland is at war and that he is its savior. He expressed seemingly genuine confusion when our governor refused his help, because he had seen on Fox News that Portland was "burning down" (it was apparently just reused B-roll from 2020.)
Let's say I'm a progressive willing to take the L and make some big concessions to the conservative faction. Maybe I'm willing to give ground on immigration or trans issues or whatever other favorite issue you have, in order to stop my city from being invaded by right-wing paramilitary forces. American government isn't actually supposed to work like that, but fine, whatever, they win.
Even if I agree to all this, the reason Trump is invading my city isn't a specific policy about trans people. Trump is invading my city because he believes wrongly that Portland is a war zone in need of a right-wing savior. He will not be convinced otherwise by facts or reporting or testimony from residents, all of which he has decided are biased and fake.
How could any policy concession I offer possibly change Donald Trump's opinion about the situation in Portland, when the facts he has are not arrived at by him or his people observing the world? How can you argue with the dreams of a machine designed to tell Trump and his party only the fantasies they want to hear? If I agree to a concession, won't he just decided to imagine a world in which I didn't make one, or in which it doesn't matter that I did because the trans antifa terrorists in his head are still attacking him?
The current shutdown negotiations are a similar example. Democrats started with a position ("Extend the Obamacare subsidies.") As near as I can tell, Republicans didn't like that position, and so they chose to create an imaginary world in which Democrats have an entirely different position ("Give health care to illegal immigrants.") Republicans are now spending all their time arguing against this new position they've made up. The Republican position on immigration is that Haitan immigrants shouldn't be allowed to eat pets. I agree, but what could I possibly say to convince them that the pet-eating isn't happening, or that it has stopped?
Putting aside any political hate, I'm not sure how you would go about negotiating concessions with a movement that works like this. How could any amount of policy concession or negotiation or surrender matter when the thing you're competing with is conservatism's own self-selected fever dreams, enabled by their technology? How do you negotiate with a politics that lives exclusively in the realm of its own unreality, that invents positions for the other side based only on what's most viscerally satisfying for them in the moment?
These people are eager to start a civil war with me and my neighbors because of bad dreams they are having about us. There are a lot of policy concessions I'd be willing to make if I thought it would calm the right-wing down. But I see very little reason to believe that anything Democrats can offer them possibly would.
You perfectly capture the overall fact-free nature of MAGA. And while I will grant that much of the political genius of Trump is that he starts with a salient point (i.e. NATO countries need to pay more for their defense or China has taken our jobs), he and the propagandists that surround and support him wrap so many lies around that fact that it becomes so distorted from reality as to become fantasy.
This is why I am not so sure Noah is correct when he says that the right would win a civil war. Winning wars requires being grounded in facts and addressing reality as it is, not as you would like it to be.
YEP. Can't create real solutions to imaginary problems.
Reading Mr. Smith’s statement that we are not in a civl war reminded me of the ongoing argument over whether what is happening in Gaza is genocide or not. If one side kills enough women and children on the other side - the progenitors and the inhabitants of the next generation - then it is genocide no matter what one chooses to call it.
Mr. Smith would have it that because we have not yet, and indeed may well not descend into a Gettysburg or an Antietam (and god knows I certainly hope we don’t), we are not in the midst of a civil war. he further notes that we have not even reverted to the kind of violence that was so prevalent in the mid-60’s to early 70’s. I was both soldier and college student at the time, and I can attest to the validity of his description.
But I feel he fails to take a couple of things into account.
First - the violence of that time was primarily over two very significant issues - racism and the Vietnam War. It was not primarily about the general form or purpose of our government, even as Richard Nixon, a pale imitation of Donald Trump, did try to neutralize or eliminate his political opposition leading to the approaching election. Now our form of government is precisely the issue, whether or not American choose to think of it in that way or not.
Second - we have managed, for the first time in our history to re-elect to the presidency of the United States a man who has proven beyond any shadow of a doubt to utterly disdain and disavow our founding, our history, our electoral process, our Constitution, and the rule of law. No other American president, with the possible exception of Andrew Johnson in a very dfferent way has been so unfit for the office (and he, of course, was not directly elected). Further, Trump has surrounded himself with a collection of lickspittles, cranks, election deniers, vengeance seekers, barn-burners, and other assorted ne’er-do-wells who seem to share that disdain and that disavowal, and in some crucial cases (Miller and Vought) actively agree with it.
Abraham Lincoln in that remarkable two minutes at Gettysburg said. “Now we are engaged in a great Civil War, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure”. In thinking civil war not to be the case simply because our ground is not yet red, I feel Mr. Smith misses Lincoln’s point.
G Elliott Morris has written a nice piece today entitled, "Why most polls overstate support for political violence." Very good read.
I do wish you had done a little more in this piece to acknowledge the existence of the center-left, which may be hard to hear over the din from the woke crowd, but which still exists, very much wants to win elections, and commands a solid majority of Democratic primary voters. Persuasion 2025 existed, but so did Welcomefest.
We can win, Noah. If we can beat the wokes in the primary we can beat MAGA in the general. Ruben Gallego was spotted in Iowa recently. It’ll be a lot of work and a lot of punching left but we can do it.
You can win if you actually attack the wokes, but the standard center left strategy these days seems to be to pretend they don't exist. That's not getting my vote.
I would point out your theory is being tested in the UK right now, and failing.
The imbalance in posts like this one by Noah is to set as the two opposing forces the "right" and the "left." But the former includes an entirety of one of our two parties which controls all three branches of government and the latter includes a small group of loudmouthed people who have up to now had disproportionate, but far from complete control over the other, currently powerless party.
They are simply incomparable entities.
As you correctly note, the victory over Trump and MAGA/the Republicans will come when the vastly bigger center and center-left organizes and finds effective ways to resist (e.g., by a landslide election next year).
<and commands a solid majority of Democratic primary voters.>
I'm not so sure about this last one. Most primary Democratic voters prefer a Bernie Sanders-style populist agenda, but tied to a candidate they think has a better chance of defeating MAGA. Abundance may be a good policy, but it's rather mediocre when it comes to politics: the center-left would do well to campaign like Bernie Sanders but govern like Hillary Clinton, rather than campaigning AND governing like Hillary Clinton.
Being the Berniebro that I am, I don't really want the center-left (or at least not THIS center-left) to win, but I still think that populist campaign + Abundance policymaking is the best route for squishy "normie lib" types like Noah.
That pill question doesn't seem to be measuring what it's touted to be. It doesn't ask if violence "should" be used for social change, it asks if it is often necessary, which people might just read as essentially a history question. Major social policy change has indeed often been associated with violence, from striking workers getting beaten by strikebreakers during the heydey of the labor movement in the progressive era to firehoses turned on protestors during Civil rights, to the actual Civil War and American Revolution. And this is even more the case if one looks outside of the US.
It seems to me the respondents may just have been answering what is truthful as a factual matter, which is what the question actually asked, not as a prescriptive matter, which it did not ask about. It might feel like one's being an ignoramus about history to answer otherwise. No surprise that self IDed moderates were the least likely to say yes, since they're also generally the most ignorant of political/historical issues in general.
It's also hard to see Gen Z as showing anything but a negligible difference in response, as between their self-ID politically. Between 40 and 49% of ALL Gen Z of any stripe answered yes, and that may just be because there's more focus on that type of struggle in the past in history classes today. The real distinction between self-IDed political tribe was among Gen X and Boomers.
"That pill question doesn't seem to be measuring what it's touted to be. It doesn't ask if violence "should" be used for social change, it asks if it is often necessary, which people might just read as essentially a history question"
I wasn't part of the polling, but this is %100 how I would have interpreted and answered the question.
Yeah that's how I would have read it as well.
G Elliott Morris had a good take on polling for views of violence yesterday:
https://open.substack.com/pub/gelliottmorris/p/most-polls-overstate-support-for?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
Like all polling be careful what you ask for!
Large gap between view on favorability and willingness to act. The impression the polls leave is that there is much more support for violence (if it leads it bleeds) than is likely to actually result in violence.
Having said that Trump et al are working very hard to incite left wing violence so that they can react with "overwhelming force". De-escalation will not come from TRUMP/MAGA.
Idk, part of me thinks Americans would give up their democracy if it meant some economic benefits. I think Noah is putting far too much faith in the American voter. Don't forget these are the same voters who saw what Trump did on January 6th, listen to his rhetoric, and concluded: that's fine, I'll vote for that. I've lost basically all faith in the moral goodness of American voters.
The saddest thing to happen in the past six months is that Trump has done catastrophic damage to our institutions and is threatening to tear down our democracy, our economy and our standing in the world and for those past six months his poll numbers have budged . . . not at all. In effect, the electorate has just shrugged at all his depredations.
That's why I'm cheering for the economy to turn sour, for people's healthcare premiums to skyrocket and many of his more tentative supporters to lose their jobs. His actions are a direct and dire threat and the only way to turn him aside is at the ballot box and the only way for that to happen is for people to glue their hands to the hot stove and to feel the effect of his leadership directly.
I wish it weren't so, but we now have all the evidence we need that that is what it takes.
(And this, btw, is why a Democratic "win" by getting the Republicans to cave and extend the ACA subsidies would be the biggest, stupidest own goal I can imagine. No, we want the voters to understand what Republican control of the government means; we *want* those premiums to skyrocket, with the Republicans' fingerprints all over them. Don't be stupid, Democrats!)
cannot disagree
People said the same thing before the US Civil War that the South would inevitably win because the south had all the guns and had a military culture. Now I am not suggesting a civil war but I think it is wrong to suggest the right would inevitably win.
Regardless of which side would win a civil war, it would inevitably be a pyrrhic victory.
But Noah and his Silicon Valley VC pals are effectively modern day copperheads because they would basically support the political "right" and hope for there victory.
I think the copperheads wanted to let the south secede to avoid a civil war. I don't think they hoped for the south's victory. And I don't read Noah as supporting the political "right". He is trying to be realistic about who holds what cards and how they can be best played.
I think that’s a very distorted view of what Noah has said here.
What did Noah say that supports those people?
Indeed!
Yeah, something like 70% of America's GDP is in blue districts, and there's a pretty good history of economic power being what wins wars, rather than quantity of guns and ammo at start (1st Civil war, WW2, etc.). Look at the success Ukraine is having targeting Russia's economics of power production and supply despite being vastly outnumbered in ammo, tanks and soldiers. I think the majority of our military industrial complex today was based on discoveries and spinouts from MIT (McDonnel Douglas, Boeing, Raytheon, General Dynamics, the atomic bombs, etc.) - seems like that's a pretty big advantage for Team Blue in this silly exercise.
I don't think Americans want a civil war either and don't want to add to the online speculation, but as soon as blue states stop sending 70+% of revenue to the Federal government, how do they fund the East German Stasi levels of internal terror and control needed to suppress half or more of the country? What percent of our 2M armed forces would take up arms against other Americans, maybe from their own states? The entire armed forces would support like one soldier every two square miles or so. Isn't it more common for empires to collapse from within after far flung areas just break away and the state doesn't have the power to stop them? Like CA stops sending their $200 Billion surplus back to the Federal government each year, and stops paying taxes - that's pretty different and harder to stop than shots at Fort Sumpter.
GDP changes the second the bullets start flying. How's that big GDP of NY going to look once they can't get fuel shipments from refineries in red areas, cargo ships won't enter the port because it's a conflict zone, and there has been capital flight from US based financial assets due to the war?
Also, CA doesn't have a surplus, nor would it send that surplus to the federal government if it had one. The federal government sends a lot of money to CA and CA sends no money to the federal government, so the leverage goes the opposite way that you think it does.
I think you're misunderstanding. Federal taxes collected from economic activity in CA are taxes paid by CA to the Federal government. If you look at Federal taxes collected from each state vs Federal funds spent in that state, CA is a net contributor to the Federal budget. These funds from wealthy states are redistributed to poorer states, as is standard in any federal system. This is separate from state taxes.
"Californians typically pay more in federal taxes than the state receives in federal spending each year, making California a “donor state.” Between federal fiscal years (FFYs) 2015 and 2023, federal taxes paid by California residents and businesses exceeded federal spending in every year except 2020, 2021, and 2023. In other words, California was a donor state in six out of the nine fiscal years for which data are available.
California likely would have been a donor state in additional years during this period if not for federal COVID funding. Since 2020, federal expenditures have included the substantial — but temporary — support provided to states, businesses, and individuals to address the COVID pandemic. These one-time COVID funds caused federal expenditures in California to jump significantly, which in turn has understated California’s role as a donor state.
Excluding temporary COVID funds from the analysis provides a more accurate picture of the long-term underlying fiscal trends and California’s true position as a donor state. Using this alternative analysis, between FFYs 2015 and 2023, Californians paid more in federal taxes than the state received in federal spending in eight out of these nine years (2020 is the exception). For example, Californians’ federal taxes exceeded federal spending — excluding COVID spending — by $55 billion in 2021, $101 billion in 2022, and $17 billion in 2023."
COVID funds drawing significantly on deficit spending means most states weren't donor states during the pandemic.
While it's true that GDP is often significantly adversely affected by war this cuts both ways, so it doesn't seem to favour the Reds. The economy of Texas won't do any better than NY in the event of a war, unless you're imagining the US Navy siding primarily with the Reds and thus the blockade only being against Blue ports. The Navy being the most educated and technocratic of the branches, they seem the least likely to predominantly swing Red. Most urban areas swing Blue, and most economic activity happens in urban areas. Were this to become an all out civil war it's very unclear to me where the lines would be drawn, and which factions would prevail, but I don't see a clear cut Red victory.
> Federal taxes collected from economic activity in CA are taxes paid by CA to the Federal government.
No, they absolutely are not. The state of CA pays 0 taxes to the federal government. Individuals located in CA pay taxes to the federal government, and they pay under rules set by the federal government, not by CA. CA has zero agency.
This claim doesn't make sense. Are you suggesting that the state of CA is somehow distinct from the geographical region called CA and the people who reside within it?
If you lived in CA, and the people of CA elected a government on a platform of seceding from the US, and a CA police officer showed up at your door to say you were under arrest for not paying your taxes, and you came to understand they meant you had sent your Federal taxes to the US federal government instead of the state government of California, and you told them "No sir, you have no agency in this matter," that would not prevent them from arresting you. As the representative body of the people of CA, the government of CA absolutely has agency over your federal taxation, in that the people of CA collectively have agency over their federal taxation.
If you wish to argue that the people of CA have no agency over their federal taxation, you had best tell that to the Americans, as they have a great many years of back taxes to pay to the British crown!
California doesn’t send money to the feds, the IRS gets it from tax withholding deducted from paychecks. How is California going to stop that?
I think the idea is that if California as a state decides to secede, it would simply tell companies that they were no longer legally obligated to deduct those funds from paycheques and send them to the Federal government. It would probably tell them they were legally obligated to send that money to the California government instead. The IRS has no way to collect that money other than arresting or fining those who fail to send it. Paycheque withholding is a legally mandated process, but it's the responsibility of companies to actively send that money to the IRS. Whoever has the monopoly on force in California can compel companies to send their taxes anywhere they please.
A civil war in the modern United States is less likely to resemble the kitchen-set warfare seen during the Civil War and more likely to resemble a guerrilla insurgency. Assuming it's a left-wing regime fighting a right-wing rebellion, it would most likely look like the Vietnam War in reverse, with right-wing militias playing the role of the Vietcong. The Left would be dominant in the cities but virtually powerless in the countryside (unless it was willing to, in General Sherman's terms, "make Georgia howl"). By contrast, if a right-wing regime were fighting a leftist insurgency, there would probably be a lot more urban warfare, though I'd probably bet on the Right in that case.
You seem not to be taking the US military into your perspective. What part do you assume they would have?
Depends. My money's that the military will opt for whoever's in charge and claims to be preserving the union (just like they did during the original Civil War). Still, many officers and soldiers will likely resign and join the opposing side.
Actually that’s not really the case. With few exceptions, those on both sides did look forward to a short war, but while many in the south thought, as one put it, “One Confederate soldier is worth ten Yankees, that was not at all a prevalent thinking in the north. And as one South Carolinian put it best after the firing on Fort Sumter - “South Carolina is too small for a country and too big for an insane asylum”.
The "quick victory" has been a delusion that has started many wars that otherwise wouldn't have been fought. Same with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the German invasion of France in WWI.
"But whether Dems are slightly ahead or slightly behind the Republicans in popularity, the fact that it’s even close is a staggering indictment of the progressive movement."
Uhhhh no. This is spectacularly wrong. The fact that it's even close is a staggering indictment of the American electorate. We have a party in power that's literally deploying the military against its own citizens, snatching random people off the streets and deporting them to foreign torture prisons, brazenly using the Justice Department to prosecute critics, etc. etc.
On the other side, a bunch of anonymous, semi-anonymous, and irrelevant people on social media are annoying on the internet. The fact that millions of people look at this and decide that there's anything to think for even a second about shows that millions of people are morally completely broken. My policy sensibilities are way way more technocratic than ideological. But these self-proclaimed centrists and swing voters going out and hemming and hawing because some people on the internet want to waste time doing land acknowledgments is a sign that we've completely lost the plot as a society.
It is this line that seems like only an assertion without support.
"Instead, the left has to realize that if there is a civil war-like conflict, and one side does win, it’ll be the right."
Wars are essentially about logistics; they involve managing resources. The blue states are the economic engines of the country, and their cities are the cylinders fueling that economy. When it comes to war, the right must figure out how to fund everything; having lots of guns alone isn't enough to win. I believe that Pritzker and Newsom are actually doing the right thing in this regard. Ultimately, it seems a Red federal government will clash with the blue states, but considering the logistics and resources, the red federal government will lose. They will lose because the blue states will stop sending money, cannot be forced to do so, and have the resources to deny a red central government the goods it needs to enforce its will.
One needs only to imagine if the West Coast states were in war with the Red Feds, the Red Feds would lose nearly 25% of GDP in a second.
Important caveat, my thinking presumes that this civil war is when the Red Fed tries regime change in these states via force.
As an old liberal, I can attest to the violence of riots and the rhetoric that was prevalent at that time. My experience in the Philadelphia may not be representative of the entire country, but here is my take. Talk is cheap, and when it comes time for actual violence, most people don't have the courage of their talk. Very few people, unless they have military experience, have experienced actual violence, seen real blood on the street in front of them, or seen the person next to them die. In an actual confrontation between groups, such as ICE and protesters, ICE would likely win since they are organized, have armored troops, and firearms. This scenario pictures a military-like contest, which ICE will win in the beginning, but remember, most of the people in ICE have never seen actual combat, and it remains to be seen how dedicated they would be when faced with the actual killing of their fellow citizens. I don't believe the majority of our military forces would agree to kill fellow citizens, regardless of an order from the chaos-monkey. I view ICE as an occupying force that will face a guerrilla insurgency, much as the Japanese or Germans would have faced if they had invaded. Ghandi freed India from British control with peaceful demonstrations, and I see the same here. The British had a unified command and control. In contrast, MAGA has an old man who has lost the respect of the military, incurred the displeasure of the Pope, and alienated the vast majority of the civilians who work for the government. When Trump goes, not soon enough, MABA will fall apart, and we can get down to compromise with those on the right who haven't lost their minds in the Cult of Trump.
"The George Floyd protests also loom incredibly large here, ..., the great protests of summer 2020 convinced the American right that their destruction was imminent unless they took drastic and ruthless action. The Biden administration’s wholehearted embrace of DEI only seemed to confirm the idea that 2020 had kicked the Great Replacement into high gear."
I'm more of a Bari Weiss type but, yeah. Embracing unprecedented immigration while actively rejecting assimilation and also engaging in anti-white theatrics was a generational mistake.
And the lawfare against Trump orchestrated in the Biden White House probably added to his support and gives him (at least in MAGA eyes) the justification for what he is doing to his antagonists now.
Hope they enjoy Democrats using the new precedents they are setting to go after them. I don't think any of them realize how much their political movement depends on right wing lawbreaking not getting prosecuted.
I think you missed trans-folk as a clutch “enemy within.” They have asked for records from gender care clinics at Childrend Hospital of Philidelphia (this is the Mass General of pediatrics) and Boston Children’s.
The underpants police are on the march.
None of the centrists want to acknowledge how much hate gets pointed at us. They might have to side with us if they did…
If you don’t mind me asking, there’s a tweet by you that was making the rounds in right wing circles with the implication I think that you wanted to displace/depower the political opposition on the right via immigration; do you think that this is the type of tweet that feeds into the great replacement theory type stuff or is the existing concern more specifically about ethnic as opposed to political concerns?
Do you still think this is a valid electoral strategy?
https://x.com/noahpinion/status/1227153134230753284
https://x.com/arctotherium42/status/1959339268503126075
Did he say it was a valid electoral strategy, or was he just toying with the idea (as stated in his tweet) and possibly being a little bit troll-y as is his wont on Twitter? I think if it was a valid strategy, he'd be writing about it often. But you do you!
That’s a good point; Noah historically has been pro immigration and I generally take what he’s saying at face value but I may have been off base with that interpretation here.